The Pregnancy Peanut Debate Continues…

In May, I covered a study that done in Montreal that warned expectant moms against eating peanuts while they were pregnant.

At that time researchers believed that:

“Eating peanuts during pregnancy appears to quadruple the risk that the baby will be allergic to nuts.”

The same study also revealed that:

“eating peanuts while breastfeeding doubles the risk a baby will develop a nut allergy.”

Now it is being reported:

That by repeatedly exposing a child’s immune system to peanuts the body learns to tolerate the allergens in such products The science and technology committee’s allergy report is likely to call on the Department of Health to change its official advice. Ministers have admitted that their guidelines that state that babies may be at a greater risk of developing a allergy against nuts if the mother or father have a history of asthma, eczema or hay fever, may be ‘entirely wrong and counter-productive’.

“If your baby is in this higher-risk group, you may wish to avoid eating peanuts and peanut products when you’re pregnant and breast-feeding,” the Daily Mail quoted the advice, as saying.

The Department of Health goes on to suggest that that these mothers should not add peanuts in their child’s diet until the age of three.

But some members of the committee have said that the advice may be ‘irresponsible’ and may even increase the risk of child allergies.

“It is quite striking that the increase in peanut allergies is rather in step with the increasing Government advice not to expose tiny children to them,” the crossbench peer Lord May of Oxford said.

“In Israel, where peanuts are quite commonly found in baby food, there has been no increase in peanut allergies.”

I am not sure that enough is known about this subject to make a decision one way or another. If I was pregnant right now, I would still avoid peanuts. It is just not worth it to chance it…